X Marks the Spot
by madame.alexandra
Summary: A visit to the LBSF universe, in which Jenny informs her dear Gibbs that some aspects of their marriage have grown, er, monotonous. Or, that story where Gibbs is irrationally attached to his roast beef sandwich.


_A/N: Every now and then I experience a deep longing to re-visit this universe of mine. I can only hope some of you enjoy the brief nostalgic trips back to the LBSF world as much as I do! _

_Here we have a little glimpse into Jenny and Gibbs' married life; baby Lucy is about a year or so old. Jenny is the Director, Kelly and McGee are married, and Gibbs is just trying to eat a damned sandwich. _

* * *

Leroy Jethro Gibbs sat on his couch confidently, relishing the uncommon silence in his house and looking triumphantly at the delicious sandwich he'd just spent a ridiculous amount of time perfecting for his nightly snack. He brazenly chose not to use a plate or a napkin, and admired his edible handiwork for a moment before opening his mouth in preparation to take a bite out of his magnificent food.

But alas.

It was not to be.

At that moment, his wife stalked past him and delivered a well-aimed _smack_ to the back of his head with an empty baby bottle, thus jolting his coordination and ruining what had promised to be an excellent first bite of sandwich.

"Use a plate, Jethro," she ordered bluntly.

Grunting in annoyance, Gibbs just muttered to himself, listened to her loudly washing out the bottle, and once again assumed maximum sandwich biting jaw position.

He was just about to sink his teeth in when his bothersome wife thwarted him again, this time walking into his line of sight with a dishtowel in her hands and giving him a matter-of-fact, sharp look.

"Our sex life is boring," the redhead announced, as casual and unconcerned as if she were simply telling him that they were out of diapers.

He made a very quiet noise of exasperation and closed his eyes slowly, his neglected sandwich still inches from his lips, able to smell the tantalizing cheese and spicy mustard begging for him to taste. Reopening his eyes deliberately, he glared at her and gestured curtly to his snack.

"Jen, I'm trying to eat a sandwich."

In a dizzyingly adept snatch, she removed the sandwich from his hands and had it in her possession before he had really comprehended what had just happened. He blinked, turned towards her in outrage, and stared at her indignantly when he caught sight of her lounging in the armchair to his right, sandwich in hand.

She took a bite and shrugged, brows arching primly.

"Now I'm eating the sandwich," she informed him, munching on it blithely, "and you have nothing to distract you from my ruminations on our conjugal love life."

Gibbs groaned, wrinkled his forehead, and rubbed it. His head hurt. He was tired and he wasn't in the mood for her to use her stupid fancy-shmancy words in a typically successful attempt to trick and/or confuse him into submission to whatever she wanted.

Jenny took another bite of his sandwich and he looked at her forlornly for a moment before narrowing his eyes with a touch of hostility.

"Boring?" he scoffed. "What do you mean, it's _boring?"_

"Boring, as in filled with tedium," Jenny answered lightly. She took another bite of his sandwich and chewed thoughtfully, "monotonous, drab, mundane, lacking in excitement, generally prosaic and humdrum—"

"Jenny," he growled, interrupting.

She licked mustard off of her pinky finger and noticed him glaring at her still.

She quirked an eyebrow pointedly and licked her lips.

"I can get a dictionary if you're still having trouble."

He grit his teeth.

"I know what boring means," he groused. He pointed at her accusingly. "Give me my sandwich," he ordered darkly.

She gave him a sassy look.

"I think not," she responded.

"I'm hungry," he informed her.

"_Your_ strength has not been sapped by breastfeeding," she fired back, chomping into the sandwich heartily once more. "_You're_ just a ravenous mongrel with unhealthy night-time eating habits," she went on.

Gibbs rolled his eyes, about twelve months tired of hearing the breastfeeding excuse.

"You haven't breastfed full time for _four_ _months_," he said.

She took a brooding bite of his sandwich.

"What an insensitive thing to say to the mother of your child," she chided him seriously. "It takes quite a lot of fortitude to pump, particularly if you have to do it while arguing with senators via Bluetooth," another bite of sandwich. She shook her head, still looking at him in that admonishing manner. "I have reason to stuff my face with a sandwich two hours after dinner. You don't."

Gibbs glared at her. He chose to remain silent on this one, for he didn't want to put his foot in his mouth. He shifted his gaze forlornly to the sandwich, well on its way to being finished, and muttered under his breath.

Jenny licked some more mustard off her finger and cleared her throat in a business-like manner. She gave him a pointed glance.

"You have yet to offer solutions to our boring sex life," she said.

He made an exasperated noise.

"What do you want me to say, Jen?" he demanded. "I hadn't noticed!"

She made a soft outraged scoffing noise and raised her eyes to the ceiling. It was as if she were utterly exasperated with his failure to somehow craft elaborate schemes to _wow_ her when they were in bed—_what_ was he supposed to do, jump out with a can of whipped cream and a leash and tie her, sticky, to the porch swing?

"You hadn't _noticed_?" she repeated scornfully.

Gibbs just looked at her balefully, still half absorbed in his irritation that she was _eating his damn sandwich. _

She shook her head and swallowed another bite of sandwich.

"We have sex once a week," she said bluntly, punctuating the sentence with a bite, "twice if it's a good week. Usually on Fridays," she took another bite, cocking an eyebrow in disapproval. "Right before we're about to go to bed, after Lucy's gone to sleep," she shook her head again and wrinkled her nose in distaste. "_With the lights off_."

Gibbs took a moment to consider her words, carefully trying to sort out what might be the _least_ dangerous way to go about contributing to this conversation. Honestly, he didn't understand why it wasn't enough for him to give her a good ten thrusts the way she liked it and kiss her neck and snuggle for about twenty minutes after—boring, maybe, but everybody came and had a good time.

However, he wasn't stupid enough to make an ignorant comment like 'but Jenny I like the missionary position and I don't want to play any weird games' so he squinted cautiously and set his jaw, tilting his head at her.

Then, he made the mistake of shrugging, which she interpreted as nonchalant indifference.

She shot him a threatening look over the last corner of sandwich in her hand.

"Oh, so you're fine with the state of the intercourse union, Mr. Meat and Potatoes?" she asked acerbically, green eyes glittering.

"Jen," he spread his palms out in exasperation. "We just had a baby."

She laughed.

"Bullshit," she trilled. "That stopped being a valid excuse right about the time my breastfeeding line lost its power."

"You used that excuse three minutes ago," he pointed out rudely.

"Obviously I was kidding."

"It was not _obvious."_

"Jethro," she growled. "Lucy's _thirteen_ months old."

"You work, Jen," he said defensively. "We value sleep more."

"_I_ work," she agreed. She pointed at him. "_You_ don't do anything, you old retired jarhead."

"I take care of Lucy all day!" he snapped, outraged by her accusation.

Jenny waved her hand carelessly.

"Cake," she said.

He glared at her, and she smirked a little—she knew very well it wasn't _cake_ to take care of a toddler all day. She was having a little fun with him, and as much as he pretended her sarcastic banter was exhausting and annoying, he thrived on it.

"I work at the recruitment office," he added.

"You sit on your ass all day," she fired back. She lifted her chin elegantly and popped her eyebrows off. "You're a regular little housewife, Cowboy, and _that_," she popped the rest of the sandwich into her mouth and enjoyed it slowly before continuing, "is why you make the sandwiches and I get to eat them."

Gibbs felt a mixture of forlorn longing for his sandwich and muted anger that she'd had the audacity to seriously sit right in front of him and eat the whole thing. His specialty sandwich concocted of mustard and cheese and pickles and steak sauce and roast beef was gone and now he really didn't want to talk about sex because he really was irrationally pissed at her for this.

He narrowed his eyes at her and thrust his hand out.

"That sandwich was going to be my sex tonight!" he growled mournfully.

She stared at him a moment and then pursed her lips in a becoming sort of pucker.

"The fact that you just compared our sex life to a roast beef sandwich proves my point more spectacularly than my vocabulary ever could."

He opened his mouth to retort, and then closed it right back again, a little sheepishly—because she was right. When he considered a nightly sandwich to be as satisfactory as sex with his smokin' hot redhead wife, there was a problem. A big, boring problem.

She gave him a sassy, smug look, well aware that she'd successfully won this one.

Gibbs reached up and rubbed his forehead, his irritation about the sandwich fading into a sort of paranoid concern that he wasn't meeting her needs properly. A wave of inadequacy hit him, followed by some stubborn refusal to bow his head and take a tongue lashing from the adventurous, insatiable harpy who called herself Jenny _Gibbs_.

"You gonna stop working so hard?" he asked edgily. "Or do you want me to come hassle you at the Navy Yard?"

She leaned forward on her knees.

"That's a completely unprofessional suggestion," she said seriously, and winked salaciously at the same time. "What do you think my work is, _Federal Agents Gone Wild_?"

He took the hint; she'd like it if he did surprise her at work with a tease now and then—but he had to be careful about that. Kelly worked there, and the last thing he needed was his daughter and Jen's team gossiping. He frowned a little

"Is that all?" he asked.

"You're not getting off that easy."

"_You're_ apparently the one not getting off easy," he muttered under his breath, a comment she sweetly pretended not to hear, though she shot him a sharp look. She pushed her hair back, letting it fall messily over her shoulders, and bit her lower lip.

"I am just stating that it doesn't have to be so bland," she said coolly. "We don't have to get into theatrics and costumes, but a good bang on the workbench wouldn't be so unwelcome now and then."

"What if Lucy walks in on us?" Gibbs whined.

"Lucy isn't walking yet," Jenny reminded him, rolling her eyes. She paused thoughtfully. "Speaking of, when did Kelly walk?"

"Eleven months," Gibbs answered promptly.

"Peter walked at nine months," Jenny murmured. She crinkled her nose. "Maybe Lucy is stupid," she said to herself, then shrugged and reverted back to the less than child appropriate subject of boring sex. "She sleeps through the night, she's a calm little darling, we're in that realm of time where we don't have to worry so much about her," Jenny glared at him and smirked wryly. "I know you haven't had a toddler since the Jurassic era, but you should know this."

Gibbs blinked at her balefully.

Jenny took his silence as invitation to verbally abuse him.

She clicked her tongue in mock concern and pouted her mouth.

"Oh, no, John Wayne, are you using Lucy as an excuse to hide your dwindling sexual capability from me?" she asked in a sickly-sweet voice. His eyes flashed with the challenge, and his spine tingled as it always did when she called him by one of her little nicknames.

She sighed a heavy, playful sigh, her eyes wide.

"I suppose that's my lot in life for marrying such an old guy," she comforted herself.

She stood up and pushed her hair back, smiling fondly. She walked towards him and touched his bicep lightly, her fingers gripping his skin.

"You _know_ that's not it," he barked, startling her a little.

"Hit a nerve, did I?" she murmured, bending a little closer. She grinned. "Serves you right. Perhaps you'll be inspired."

He straightened up and reached out, touching her hips.

"We can have sex right now," he decided aggressively, intent on dispelling her idiotic notion that he was getting too old to perform. "Right here."

She laughed and shook her head a little, pressing a kiss to the corner of his mouth.

"I'm tired, Jethro," she demurred, rubbing his neck lightly, her soft skin sending a few more welcome shivers down his spine. He frowned at her suspiciously, and slipped his hands down on her thighs a little, wriggling his brows.

"Come on, Jen," he coaxed smoothly, leaning forward to kiss her stomach through her thin t-shirt. "You wanted it," he growled, pulling her down to his mouth. "Come get it."

She laughed again, shaking her head and giving him a kiss. Determined, he held the kiss, his fingers stroking enticingly into her hair, and she pulled away once she'd patiently indulged him.

"No," she said, her eye glinting mischievously. "I'm going to bed."

She saluted him lazily and left the room, yawning as she rounded the corner and headed to their bedroom. After a moment, he heard running water—the sound of her brushing her teeth. Frustrated, he leaned back on the couch and rubbed his mouth. He glared down the hall at that little teasing hypocritical minx.

In a span of fifteen minutes, he had his sandwich stolen, had been told he was severely dropping the ball when it came to satisfying his wife, and was _denied_ the sex that damn woman had _demanded_ he spice up for her.

Gibbs sat on the couch for a good twenty minutes, staring moodily at nothing and stewing in general annoyance. He refused to go in there and sleep peacefully next to Jenny, infuriating loveable shrew that she was.

Gripped with sudden insomnia—and the very inspiration she'd mockingly teased that he needed—he got up, stormed into his basement haven, and grabbed his duct tape.

* * *

Leroy Jethro Gibbs spent a good two hours measuring pieces of duct tape into equal strips and taping them in 'X' formation at random points all over their house. He made sure they were placed in somewhat hidden, interesting, and slightly unexpected places, and he was careful to go about his sneaky way quietly so as not to alert Jenny to his deeds.

After midnight, when he was satisfied with his handiwork, he stormed back to the basement and chucked the now thin roll of duct tape back into his toolbox. He turned off all the lights in the house, checked on his baby, and slipped into bed with Jenny, where he fell asleep with an innocent smirk on his lips.

* * *

It was Friday afternoon when Jenny was combing through her kitchen cabinets in search of Lucy's favorite orange butterfly sippy cup and she stumbled across an X made of duct tape on one of the cabinets. It was grey, about the size of her palm, and located near the bottom corner of the cabinet door—hidden in the corner, right near the refrigerator.

She stopped in her pursuit of her daughter's beloved cup and tilted her head, frowning in confusion. She touched the duct tape gingerly and tried to peel at it; it was stuck fast to the wood, indicating it hadn't been there long.

She tucked her hair behind her hears.

"Jethro?" she shouted vaguely, not too worried about waking the baby. Lucy had been napping for about an hour; there was no longer a need to keep their voices down.

"What?" He asked from somewhere in the backyard.

She glanced towards the screen door and furrowed her brow, crossing the kitchen so he could hear her better. She looked through the living room at him as he messed with the grill out back.

"Have you and Levi been playing some sort of sniper game?" she asked, for it was her best guess as to what this mysterious marking could mean.

Gibbs wiped sweat off of his forehead and walked into the house, giving her a quizzical look.

"What?" He asked again, quieter this time.

He came into the kitchen and took a beer out of the refrigerator, busy getting ready to grill dinner for himself, Jenny, and the McGees. He popped the cap off and raised an eyebrow, waiting for her to explain herself.

Jenny walked backwards and tapped lightly on the duct tape X.

Gibbs looked over and then set his beer down coolly, giving her a languid, mysterious look.

"Nah, that's got nothin' to do with me and Levi," he said. He pointed to the X himself. "That's a game for me 'n' you."

She raised her brows with mild interest and put her hand on her breast.

"Oh, are you playing games with my heart?" she asked in a silly tone, putting a hand on her hip and waiting for him to explain.

Gibbs grinned and shut the fridge. He turned to her and stepped close, invading her space, and she smirked a little, surprised, but intrigued.

"I got to thinkin' after our conversation the other night," he said in a low voice, putting his hands on her hips and slowly sliding them up her sides a little.

"Did you?"

"Mmmhmm."

Without warning, he lifted her up and sat her on the counter, earning a curious look from the redhead. She folded her arms in front of her expectantly and cocked her head, licking her bottom lip blithely.

"What did ya think?" she asked lightly.

"Thought of an idea," he muttered, leaning forward and pressing a teasing kiss to her lips, his mouth lingering on her lower lip. She drew in a deep breath and smiled against that mouth of his. He reached behind her and tapped the back of her head with an index finger.

Then, he tapped the X behind her, and he gently pressed her head back against the duct tape X.

"Your head goes here," he instructed huskily, trailing his lips along her jaw, closer to her ear. He grinned smugly, obviously quite proud of herself. "Hid 'em all over the house," he informed her casually.

"What happens when I find one?" Jenny asked tilting her head up to allow him easier access to her throat.

He grumbled something, and then cleared his throat.

"I tell you what part of your body goes on the duct tape," he growled, stepping in between her knees and resting a hand on her thigh, "and then it's not boring."

She let out a thrilled giggle, and her skin flushed a little pink.

"I find crisscrossed duct tape, and we drop everything and fuck?"

He nodded. That was pretty much the gist of the idea.

"Scandalous," she purred. She put her palm on his shoulder suddenly. "Lucy's going to wake up any minute," she said, a little disheartened. "Kelly and Tim will be here in twenty."

Gibbs shrugged and reached for her shorts, unbuttoning the to button and slowly dragging the zipper down.

"You wanted spicy," he said, teasing her a little with his mocking. He lifted his lips to hers, kissed her again, and then looked her hard in the eyes, seeking her hard-to-win approval. She bit her lip and smirked, silent, and impressed.

She blew air out lightly threw her lips and curled her heels into the backs of his thighs, pressing her crimson, tied up bun of hair against the duct tape behind her. She took his hand and moved it beneath her panties, catching her breath.

"X marks the spot," she quipped coyly.

He gave her a wicked look—

-and then, by the end of the weekend, she'd forgotten what the word _boring_ even meant.

* * *

Monday morning, and Jenny was exhausted. She'd started the day with a rigorous meeting with SecNav and SecDef, then been forced to prematurely run a mission in Cairo that might not have succeeded if they had waited until the date it was set for. Ass-kissing meetings and risky business missions were not the best thing to start the day with, and on top of that she had gotten very little sleep all weekend.

She had picked up her baby from the bullpen and retreated to her office for some semi-solitary peace and quiet. She played with Lucy for a good fifteen minutes, then nursed her and rocked her to sleep with her foot on the baby car seat next to her desk. Rubbing her forehead, and wincing as she shifted, she abandoned the files she'd turned to and laid her head down on her desk, her lip bitten slightly.

Tired and vaguely sore as she was, she still smirked a little to herself, closing her eyes lightly and reflecting smugly on the weekend she'd just had.

Jethro had been remarkably cunning in his hiding of duct tape X's all over the house; she had found them in the most unexpected places, and she had never been able to guess what he was going to tell her to put on the X.

Often it was her head; sometimes it was her knees, sometimes her tailbone, twice it was an elbow, and once it was her heel. It was fresh and exhilarating and she couldn't really remember ever having such a wild experience in sexual activity with Gibbs, and of none of it would she complain.

She had found what he said was the last X this morning ten minutes before she had to walk out the door. It had been strategically placed on the door handle in the back seat of her car, and it had been for her left hand. She'd had to stop backing out of the driveway and go get Jethro to see to her needs in the car.

Jenny smirked.

She pushed her hair back, crossed her legs, winced, and decided it was okay for her to take a little director catnap.

* * *

Tony DiNozzo let out a whistle as he walked into the bullpen with some copies of the Cairo brief and handed them out. He sat down at his desk, formerly Jenny Shepard's desk, and put his feet up, arching an eyebrow as he looked around at his team.

"You look smug," Kate Burley, nee Todd, commented, giving him her usual shrewish, annoyed look.

"You catch Jenny pumping breast milk again?" Kelly asked calmly, well aware the comment would induce Tony to make an uncomfortable face and probably deter him from whatever kookiness he was up to.

McGee laughed, looking across the bullpen at his wife. She grinned to herself, but Tony just shook his head.

"Nah, Baby Goose is asleep," DiNozzo said, waving his hand as he employed his nickname for his boss's daughter. "Think you better go check on Red, Kelly," he added.

Kelly's brow furrowed and she looked up, immediately changing her tune. If Jenny needed to be checked on, then she was no longer Kelly's director—she became her stepmother and her father's wife.

"She okay?" Kelly asked.

"Dunno," DiNozzo said. "She's out of it. Not listless, but," DiNozzo paused and frowned, shrugging a little. "Dunno," he said again. "She's in a daze. Like she's been hittin' the Mary Jane."

Kelly let out a bark of disbelieving laughter.

"Oh, sure, DiNozzo, Director Gibbs has been smoking marijuana at work," Kate said, rolling her eyes.

"I'm just sayin' that's what she's acting like," Tony said. "Maybe she and Gibbs had a fight," he added.

Kelly sighed and stood up. Her father hadn't said anything at the cookout on Friday and everything had seemed fine, but then again, Jenny and Leroy Jethro Gibbs were two artful pros at making everything appear blissfully wonderful when there was a storm raging under the surface.

They were frightfully not busy in the bullpen, so off Kelly went up the stairs and down the catwalk to her Director-Stepmother's office.

"Morning, Cynthia," she greeted Jenny's assistant lightly. "Can I go in?" she asked, pointing at the door.

"Director," Cynthia said, buzzing Jenny through the intercom. "Agent McGee is asking to see you."

There was a silence, and then Jenny's voice came through the metallic medium:

"The female specimen or the male specimen?" she asked, bored.

"Female," Cynthia answered, smiling.

"She can come in," Jenny allowed, and Kelly walked through the door, shutting it behind her.

Jenny was sitting up at her desk, patting her hair, straightening her blouse a bit. Kelly folded her arms comfortably as she lazily walked in, and shot a smile at Lucy. The baby slept in her car seat at Jenny's feet, a peaceful look on her little face. The little crinkle of weird wonder appeared at the top of Kelly's nose, the sole indicator that she thought it surreal that her sister was almost a year younger than Kelly's own daughter.

Kelly lifted her eyes to the redheads and studied her for an intent moment.

Jenny looked tired but calm. She was leaning on her desk a little awkwardly, but there was nothing really to suggest that something was horribly wrong—though Tony was right; Jenny looked, for lack of a better word, 'out of it'.

"Is everything okay with you and Dad?" Kelly asked bluntly.

Jenny's expression didn't even flicker. She curtly nodded her head, her lip twitching slightly.

"Peachy keen," Jenny answered silkily. "Why the inquiry?"

Kelly shrugged.

"DiNozzo thinks you're out of sorts."

"DiNozzo wouldn't know out of sorts if it smacked him in the face for he has no sorts to be out of," Jenny replied sassily.

Kelly arched an eyebrow and inclined her head to agree. She smirked.

"You look beat," she remarked. "Lucy's way past the keeping you up all night stage," Kelly added conversationally.

"Lucy is," agreed Jenny, with an inexplicable air of mystery. She appeared to be biting back a smile, but then she yawned, and there was a wince in that yawn somewhere, and Kelly just gave the other woman an exasperated look.

"Well something is up, Jenny, you're a little less put together than usual."

"Don't you worry your pretty little mind."

Kelly glared insistently.

Jenny laughed, her head tilting back a little, and shook her head. She bit her lip apologetically—and almost seductively—and gave Kelly a sympathetic and impish look.

Then, she said something Kelly had _never_ wanted to hear in her _entire_ life:

"It's your father's fault, Kel, he knocked the bottom out of me last night."

* * *

_*If you'll remember, Kate married and had a child (Elle) with Stan Burley.  
No, I do not have any idea why I felt the need to have Gibbs be so obsessed with a roast beef sandwich. _


End file.
